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[pacoast]

I'm having some trouble finding out much information about the relative merits of fork & diving arm mixers. I'm more familiar with planetary & spiral mixers. In the bread builders, Alan Scott only tells us that fork mixers are effective & that they can work with a minimum batch size of about 75% of maximum capacity. And for diving arm mixers, not much is said other than they are intended to be gentle on the dough by emulating hand kneading & they they can accommodate batch sizes down to about 30% of maximum capacity.

There doesn't seem to be much discussion about this on PMQ either. Of course every manufacturer has plenty of (largely spurious) reasons why their specific mixer is the best. Does anyone here know more about the strengths & weaknesses of fork vs. diving arm mixers?

Thanks.

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[Bill/SFNM]

Alan Scott only tells us that fork mixers are effective & that they can work with a minimum batch size of about 75% of maximum capacity

Max. batch size for fork mixer I use is 5kg. I regularly make batches of 1.5kg. I stick a spoon in the bowl every once in while to insure even kneading. It is easy to keep everything kneading smoothly with even smaller batches in my home kitchen. Probably not something I would want to rely on in a busy commercial setting. Difficult to generalize since hydration levels, type of flour, etc. will make a big difference.

[s00da]

I've done some internet searches a while ago and I haven't found much said about fork mixers except some comparisons that they are close to the efficiency of spiral mixers in terms of delivering energy to the dough and develop it fast. As for diving-arm, they are more gentle on the dough that they don't raise the temperature much and they are more efficient than spiral in kneading high hydration dough.